About Last Week...
...And the Very Near Future
Let’s start with a few comments about at least part of the torrent of nominations made by Donald Trump.
On the health side, tapping Jay Bhattacharya to lead the NIH and Marty Makary for the FDA and Dave Weldon for the CDC are all solid choices. Specially at the NIH, Bhattacharya has already said that he will work to restore the concept of funding actual science rather than grant proposals that have the magic word of “equity” in them (for anyone worried about the very squishy Surgeon General nominee, just remember they act as a PR spokesperson front person more than a day-to-day administrator.)
If you have ever wondered why DEI took over hard science, the NIH has been one of the main causes.
Need funds? Write a grant proposal. Want to make sure you get said funding, include an equity element. Then publish results talking about equity and then the public will talk about equity and then the NIH will (was, now, thankfully) interpret that as a sign they are doing the right thing by funding equity-adjacent studies on how best to fractionate rat brains and there you go.
The environment creates the funding, the funding grows the environment, and she told two friends and she told two friends and that’s that.
Expect that to change.
On the justice side, a pair of notes.
First, there is the chance that Kash Patel will become the next head of the FBI. That would be good.
How do we know that?
Because the DC press is hammering him to the nth degree, calling him a “disruptor.”
In DC, being called a “disruptor” of the status quo is worse than being called a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. The alleged epithet is meant to immediately disqualify someone from whatever job they are seeking because, by definition, disruptors disrupt and that can never be allowed.
The natural order of things may never be changed.
At some point, the media playbook that imploded on November 5 will have to be dropped – the public already is doing its part in ensuring this may actually happen, with MSNBC and CNN both seeing 50%-ish viewership drops.
Throw in RFK Jr.’s idea to ban prescription drug ads from the airwaves and MSNBC may have to run “My Pillow” ads to pay Rachel Maddow her $500,000 a week.
And FCC chief nominee Brendan Carr seems rather whole-hearted in his belief that the censorship state must, so that’s good.
Speaking of the censorship state, wither Murthy V. Missouri?
Technically, nothing has changed in the past month RE the status of the case. A quick reminder – the case went to the Supremes and Amy Coney Barrett screwed the standing pooch and disallowed the request of the plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction against the federal government to force it to stop, in violation of the First Amendment, censoring them.
That fact is not really in dispute – the feds really did either directly or indirectly censor people who disagreed with its stance regarding the pandemic response and/or the idea that putting together-on the fly - an all-mail-in voting system in 2020 was not really the best idea, security wise.
This is where incoming Attorney General Pam Biondi can have an immediate impact. Remember the government itself is the defendant – she can simply decide that the case is not worth defending.
AGs and DAs do this all the time – it’s called prosecutorial discretion, even though technically in this case about continuing to defend something indefensible.
Example: Los Angeles had George Gascon – well, has until tomorrow morning – as its District Attorney. In a desperate bid for votes, he launched the “Free the Menendez Brothers” effort.
But Nathan Hochman, new DA – as of Monday AM – has the right and the obligation to review the case before it goes to final (not really, but kinda) disposition in January.
Granting new trials, reconsidering new evidence and on and on is in the sole purview of the DA, so Hochman is taking a new look at the effort.
And that is what will happen with Murthy – Biondi will have the right, opportunity, and (actually) duty to review the government’s defense against the allegations it has been engaged in unconstitutional censorship.
Which of course it has.
So as the case wends it way back through circuit court, Biondi could simply say – come to think of it, it seems the government was engaged in illegal activity so we will not defend it.
And then, essentially, the case, by default, is won by the plaintiffs and government censorship is outlawed.
So that’s a very good thing.
By the way, some of y’all may have noticed a bit less “California” on the site for the past few weeks.
I no longer write directly for the California Globe – either very long or very short story, both hopelessly irksome – hence the dearth of Golden State content over the past few weeks.
That will change and starting t his week I will be posting a “California Roundup” piece every Saturday.
Why must we continue to pay attention to California? Because, as noted in the past, that is where a lot of very very bad political ideas have begun and forewarned is being four-armed…that’s wrong, but still oddly appropriate and kinda funny.
For an actual epigram this week, I thought this bit of non-horse related logic from Catherine the Great made sense:
"If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning."
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